Halfway There

PET-CT was yesterday, results were today. My oncology team is stressed about my stress levels. I don’t have a magic wand. I guess I need to decide if I want to see the psychiatrist, which isn’t really my thing. I almost would like to see how my mood is impacted after we finally do my brain radiation (please let it be SRS, pleeeassse let it be SRS). Stress is bad for cancer treatment and overall wellbeing, so I need to knock it off.

(Note added based on comments: my oncology team wants to make sure they are giving me the best care, which includes how I am doing emotionally. They know I have been having a harder time emotionally and want to make sure that I have medications I could need and have them managed if I need to. I also have a social worker as an active part of my medical team. They and I don’t discount the level of stress/sadness that is expected with what I am going through. Thank you! Sometimes I talk out loud when I blog. <3)

I am looking forward to camping season and getting out in the woods with my hubby and dogs.

My PET-CT was a mixed bag, but not bad. I have some lymph nodes in the middle of my chest that look like they have grown and new ones getting worse, but one getting better (I am waiting for the exact report from my oncology team, when it comes through I will update stuff if I misread it).

The most important spot on this body scan, to me, was this liver, and my liver spot shows as resolved. It isn’t showing up anymore. I would love to see everything go away, but liver and brain are the two areas of larger concern when it comes to survival.

The bright yellow spot on left is my tumor spot on my liver, on right it is gone.

My bones were a mostly mixed bag, mostly showing improvements, they only really look at the big ones. I have no idea how many I truly have, just where my worst spots are. This time it noted a small pleural effusion (which last time said scarring) so I am not sure which is which. So we will worry about that one if it becomes an issue.

My brain MRI is Tuesday along with my appointment with my radiation oncologist to figure out what the plan is to do with the new tumor in my brain that was actively growing, hopefully just the one right now. My tumor markers had another small increase, so it could just be a sign of what is going on in my brain. If nothing is growing then we may have to toss them out as no longer useful (which would be new to me, but maybe it would teach me to wait 3 months to freak out vs. every month). We are adding in the other marker we weren’t measuring next time we pull my labs in 3 weeks.

So we are halfway there on scans and land of scanxiety. I am continuing Taxotere/Perjeta/Herceptin as I look mostly stable in my body. I will likely have brain radiation coming up again too.

I know everyone is fretting about how I feel. I am ok, I promise. I just want to be honest about scans and stuff like this being super stressful and I am not always a bag of rainbows (although I would like to be, there is no way living with any form of cancer is emotionally easy!). One day at a time.